The Rite
by Warner Hedgehog
Summary: This story concerns one of the wizarding world's least popular (especially amongst the older wizards) practices and how it may have come about. It's a work in progress and hopefully will make more sense as it goes on. maybe. There's a bit in part four that doesn't make sense. It may need beating with a sycamore branch.
1. A wizard is born

**The Rite.**

Bernard Grobbin was a very successful cattleman on the Sto plains. Bernard's first son was the heir to his cattle ranch, and the following six sons grew up to be fine ranch hands. The next son, Ernie grew up to work in and eventually run his own tannery. Ernie also had many sons, the eighth of which he named Barney. Shortly after his son's birth, Ernie had an unexpected visitor: a wizard called Crumb. Crumb looked at Ernie, and said "Do you know why I am here?"

Ernie's expression was blank, "I can't say I do Mr. Crumb."

Crumb sighed: sometimes you met people who didn't know how things worked. "You are the eighth son of Bernard Grobbin are you not?" He eyed Ernie, who nodded blankly, "and your newest child is your eighth son correct?" Ernie nodded again, "that happens to make him a wizard. I am your 3rd cousin, and that makes me his closest wizardly relative, so it is my duty to guide him."

"So what should I do?" Ernie asked.

"As it happens, your village elders have recently contacted the Unseen University to request a village wizard: someone to help out with magical matters and to help protect the place, so I shall be moving in. I will help teach and guide the boy, and when he is old enough we will attempt to secure the chance for him to be taught by my colleagues in the University. And before you ask, it will probably be his eighth birthday." Crumb responded.

"Oh, okay." Ernie mumbled.

And so the wizard Crumb settled into village life, becoming a sort of doctor slash magical protector. Young Barney became Crumb's apprentice and to his family's surprise started to exhibit strong magical potential.

Crumb spent the next few years carefully arranging things so that the boy could enroll in the Disc's premier magical learning establishment on his eighth birthday.


	2. Moving upwards

**Many years later.**

Archchancellor Oswald Carbonate strode along to the bursar's office. Carbonate strode everywhere in an effort to look as important and as imposing as possible, while the Bursar was more inclined to sidle or creep everywhere as if he had an allergy to being noticed. The Bursar however was also very nosy and therefore a good man for information.

The Archchancellor knocked on the door and barged in. As usual he didn't bother with a preamble, "Have you seen young Grobbin?"

"Oh, he's in the dullary." said the Bursar. The dullary was an especially boring room where people could practice certain specialised spells and magical techniques in a suitably monotonous environment.

"Oh gods, I can't stand that place." moaned Oswald.

* * *

Young Grobbin was sat on a depressingly grey chair in an especially drab corner of the dullary, contemplating the nature of knowledge. He had a tendency to go off on odd philosophical journeys and preferred to poke at the fabric of reality by thinking about it rather than prodding it with magic, not that he was bad at magic: he just liked thinking and found that one of the dullest rooms on the Disc was a good place for thought.

Grobbin was tall and lanky with a rather pale complexion. He usually wore green starry robes as a tribute to his family history on the Sto plains. As a bonus joke he'd added a few cows in amongst the stars, but as yet no-one had noticed.

He was in the middle of a promising line of thought about what Death knew about the Disc and how He knew it when the Archchancellor unceremoniously burst in with his usual tact and grace. "Ah, Grobbin!" He exclaimed, "I've been looking for you."

Barney sighed, "Hello Archchancellor. How good to see you."

"Congratulations Grobbin. You've just gone up in the world. Old Orin Greenguage finally dropped off his perch, which as you know means your whole order now shuffles one place forward."

Barney looked quizzically at Carbonate, "So what happened?"

The Archchancellor sighed, "You know his little fascination with alchemy? Well, it would seem it was more of an obsession and he had a secret set-up in an old tower about 5 miles hubwards from here. We think some part of an...experiment went critically wrong and now the tower is spread out over a couple of acres; so is Orin."

"Oh. I quite liked him." Grobbin observed, "Quite a knowledgeable fellow you know, and good with a dirty joke. A bit on the mad side but then who isn't?"

"Can't argue there." the Archchancellor paused to remember Orin, "Speaking of mad, Leonard DeLyon is his successor as head of the order and that oddball Carlos Lupine is now nipping his heels."

And so a young Bernard Grobbin, at that point just 22 years old, started climbing the laborious ladder of success at the Unseen University.

It wasnt long until Grobbin wrote his first book: Written when was a mere 25, it was a very laborious treatise on the history of the Dullary and the magic developed within. While the book was as depressingly boring as it's subject, what made it vaguely interesting was that the young wizard had used the pen name Ashkente as it sounded infinately more enigmatic than Barney Grobbin. The name had come to him in a bizarre dream; an extremely odd vision involving a sack of spuds, a deposed king, a depressed nun and a place called Ash in a mysterious region known as Kent. Most of the dream went unremembered, but for some reason the words Ash and Kent stuck in his head.

It should be noted that young wizards and students often got the book from the library simply because of the name Ashkente. They almost always returned it within a few hours, feeling like they'd really wasted their time.


	3. Tragic Inspiration

The wizard Grobbin had decided that he'd like to spend his 30th birthday with his family and had arranged passage on the SickTree Stage. The Archchancellor had offered Grobbin the use of his Seven League Boots, but Barney had declined as one error in the protection magicks would mean your difference would be split quite severely; besides, the stage drivers often liked to have a wizard on board anyway, just in case magical protection was required. There were sometimes bandits about and someone with the ability to hurl magical fire might be of some use. As it happened the journey was fairly uneventful and the distance between Ankh-Morpork and the Grobbin Ranch was covered quite quickly.

His birthday was quite a pleasant affair, spent surrounded by family and old friends Including his old mentor, the village wizard Crumb. Much was eaten, much drink was consumed and much merriment was had.

The day before he was due to return to the big city, tragedy struck. Crumb hadn't been feeling that good for a few days, and while he and Barney were out walking an encounter with a Javelin-Necked Swan which was merrily whizzing along at top speed left him feeling a whole lot worse. While the two wizards were looking up at, and trying to indentify some birds overhead, the swan lived up to its name and speared him straight through the stomach.

Barney leapt back in shock, but quickly went to his master's side, "Master Crumb!" he yelled.

As he lay on the ground looking at his enswanned body in horror, Crumb knew he was going to die very shortly. With his strength fading he held his staff out and said, "Barney Grobbin, this is now your wizard's staff. Use it wisely. Goobye my student, fare well."

As he attempted to overcome his shock, Grobbin knelt by his master and took the staff and felt its power tingle under his fingers. "Thank you sir. I will do my best." He cradled the old man's head.

I'M SURE YOU WILL. OGLINGTON CRUMB, I HAVE COME FOR YOU. AND THE SWAN. Barney Grobbin almost jumped out of his skin as the Grim Reaper calmy walked up to them. He was even more startled as his mentor appeared to sit up while still lying down.

"Oh. I didn't expect that to be so quick." observed Crumb. "I didn't expect to be gored to death by a bloody great bird either."

Barney stood up as did Crumb's ghost; they looked down at the spirit of the swan. Going headfirst through a portly wizard turned out to be bad for both the man and the bird. Barney spoke, "That is a shame. That is, sorry was, a really rare type of swan. It's even rarer now." The swan tried to peck at the grass and didn't get far.

Crumb looked at Grobbin in surprise, "Stuff the swan! I thought I was quite a rare example of me!"

YOU WERE. NOW YOU ARE UNFORTUATELY EXTINCT.

A thought occurred to Barney, "How do you know where to be?" He asked.

I KNOW A LOT OF THINGS, INCLUDING WHERE AND WHEN TO BE. Death replied.

Barney enquired, "Is there a way to ask you important questions?"

YOU MEAN, IS THERE A WAY TO SUMMON ME SO YOU CAN INTERRUPT MY VERY IMPORTANT WORK JUST TO ASK SOMETHING YOU COULD EASILY FIND OUT ON YOUR OWN? Death glared at Grobbin.

"I would only do so if I couldn't find an answer easily, but yes." Barney confirmed.

THE ANSWER IS YES. THERE ARE...WAYS TO SUMMON ME. AND BEFORE YOU ASK, I WILL NOT TELL YOU WHAT THEY ARE. YOU WILL HAVE TO USE YOUR INITIATIVE. TO TELL YOU WOULD TAKE FAR TOO LONG AND I AM VERY BUSY. SPEAKING OF WHICH. Death turned to the two spirits and appeared to say something to them while vanishing.

Barney looked around, and he was alone on a hilltop with a dead swan and a deceased wizard. So you can summon Death he thought. Oh sure, for the longest time people had been summoning demons, angels and other oddbod beings to gain knowledge about various things, but as far as he knew no-one had summoned Death himself yet. But then who in their right mind would want an early visit by the taker of souls? Someone who wanted extremely important and hard to discern knowledge, that's who.

"I suppose the village people should know about this." he muttered to himself. "After all, do you want to spend the night on a hilltop with these two?"

With a sigh he looked at the corpse of his friend, hefted the staff and cast a protection spell over the area. He didn't want anything to happen to Crumb's body before he got back with a cart.

The next day Crumb was buried in the village cemetery before Grobbin returned to the University.

* * *

On his return to UU, Barney went straight to see Crumb's old friend, the Senior Professor of Scrying, Scrundle Dirge.

"So old Fartworthy's gone." mused the old wizard, "Who'd have thought it?" He looked over at Grobbin, "What happened?"

Grobbin took a deep breath, if only to calm himself, "We were out walking and he was hit square in the middle by a Cygnus Jupitus."

"Hmm, they're pretty rare. Rarer now I presume." Scrundle noted. "At least he got to see such a magnificent creature before he went: He'd have liked that."

"I don't think he was overly pleased about it. The bird wasn't thrilled either to be home honest." Barney said, "Where did 'Fartworthy' come from?"

"Well, its from those mad days when we were students you see. We were always into practical jokes, and one day I created a joke elixir that I told people would help them in exams. It was supposed to make them bloat up a bit and make their face glow bright green, but in Oglington's case it didn't quite do what it should and caused him to go slightly blue and to...pass a lot of wind. For a week." Dirge giggled at the memory.


	4. Learning

Grobbin spent a lot of the next few years in the library, scouring the shelves. His conversation with the Reaper had sparked something inside him and now he had a quest: find out how to summon Death. Yes he could simply kill someone and wait, but people tended to get a bit upset by that sort of thing; besides that, it wasn't really in keeping with the wizardly way of things. Wizards generally preferred a lot of pointless faffing about with candles, spells, chanting and magic circles, if it didn't involve complex ritual berking around then they tended to lose interest.

He spent much time reading and trying to comprehend the nature of as many summoning rituals as he could. He sought out eight peculiar Tsortean Demon rituals, several weird Klatchian djinn calling ceremonies, a couple of months was spent on the virtually unknown Ephipian Angel Annoying Rite. He travelled to Genua to gain insight into the mysterious power of voodoo as well as Hoodu and Obia. Three months were devoted to reading Lapsang Coluphid's 'The Bumper Book of Questionable Spirit Questioning Methods'. He also spent much time reading about the anthropomorphic personification of Death. He needed to know all that humanity knew about his boneyness and his ways, so that he could direct magic at him.

He found works by Aristocrates, Gnomon, Herr Doktor Maspinder and the great Ly Tin Wheedle. He studied many books that detailed the prophetic Great Pyramid of Tsort.

Basically, he examined both the summoning Death rituals of as many peoples as he could, hoping to glean any and all pertinent information.

During his studies he collected a great many artifacts pertaining to summoning, as well as a slightly disturbing set of pink demonologist teapots. He found an Ephibian daemon stick, a Krullian ram-skull lampshade, several Uberwald silver garlic shakers, two ceremonial birdbaths that were dredged from the Djel, a Borogravian Vampire Duck call and a whole slew of other peculiar summoner's knick-knacks. The trick to it was to sort through the various magical and pseudo-magical bits and bobs and working out which were any use and which were pointless tat, so another few months were spent examining his hoard of things.

One of his early observations of these rituals was that one thing that was a fairly common ingredient in many ceremonies was blood, preferably fresh. The preferred method of obtaining blood often required the ritual murder of some innocent young lady, who as part of proceedings, was made to wear weird jewelry, diaphanous see-through dresses and little else. Grobbin reasoned that it was probably the killing of the victim/sacrifice that caused Death to show up and most of the 'magical' stuff they littered the area with were just stage dressing and nothing else, so he automatically discounted most of the things with bloodstains on them. A few things stood out however: a horse's skull that was covered in expertly carved mystic runes and pentagrams, an octarine encrusted gold tiara that he'd found in a grotty museum in Pseudopolis, a little mystical scrawl-filled notebook he'd picked up in a castle in the Ramtops and a rabbit-shaped pinata that glowed like a maniac that he'd bought in a market in Gebra.

His next task was theoretically simple: cook up a way to use what he'd now learned and found to summon Death. Maybe a word with the Archchancellor first was a wise idea.


End file.
